Good grub in country pubs

Wednesday 15 November 2000 00:00 BST

Toad would have been up for it. Even if he wasn't head over heels, poop-poopingly in love with the motor car, a run to the country would have been just up his street. Country pubs are different from their town counterparts, and nowhere is the difference more obvious than when it comes to eating.

Townies have had it pretty good where gastropubs are concerned - granted that many of them err on the side of gastro and neglect the pub bit - but slipping out to the local for a bit of nosebag is not the grey Scotch egg and encrusted shepherd's pie kind of event that it once was. But like anyone else, when chefs and restaurateurs reach a certain age (and the local inner-city schools don't seem quite as appropriate as they did in those far-off days before children), they start to get antsy and move directly to the country, only pausing to collect £650,000 for their little house in Fulham.

These wise folk have dispersed throughout the Home Counties, and now there is a ring of 'country' pubs offering pretty decent food and all within the magic hour's travelling time of at least some parts of London. So it is time to saddle up the trusty automobile, insist that you drive on the outward leg of the journey, and set off to see what is what.

As you motor through the suburbs, it is worth reflecting on the perfect country pub and just what you hope to find within its portals. It should have some decent beers: genuine, English, hoppy brews. It should have a magnificent sandwich to accompany them if the day leads you towards liquid nourishment and ballast rather than a gourmet adventure. Its main menu should be reliable rather than over-fancy - you are looking for carefully cooked, unpretentious, tasty food. It should have a wine list that allows you to be expansive and knowledgeable should you so desire, without the need to renegotiate your overdraft. Above all, it should be a friendly, lively, comfortable place.

The Hankley

Let's suppose that you throw open the doors of your mews garage in elegant Wandsworth and point the long and gleaming bonnet of the Bentley towards the South West. Your destination lies about an hour away, just to the south of Farnham, and nestles in a green land that is all golf courses and smart houses. Here the natives do a little light commutering, but mainly they 'potter' about happily.

The Hankley stands at the end of the lane which leads up to Hankley Common Golf Course (which you will find near to a place called Tilford). It is a white-painted building and in the autumn of 1999 acquired a new proprietor. The bar is small but welcoming and there is a 50-cover dining room. There's also a terrace outside which has just seen a busy summer and is very agreeable on those all-too-rare occasions when the rain abates and the sun shines.

The array of beers is most impressive: as well as Lionheart from the Hampshire Brewery, there's T.E.A. from the award-winning Hog's Back Brewery, Harvey's and Beckett's Stoke Ale. There's even a rather good and authentic lager beer from Augsburg called Riegele, plus Thatcher's Dry Cider.

The sandwich menu could be used in the classroom to teach aspirant licensees that there is life after cheese and tomato: Stilton and pear with mango chutney, rare roast beef with horseradish, spinach, red onion and feta cheese, crispy aromatic duck with hoi sin sauce, spring onions and cucumber. Few of these options crash the £4.50 barrier.

The main lunch menu at The Hankley offers the kind of food you like to eat - a huge bowl of rich leek and potato soup, salmon and dill fishcakes with a watercress sauce, a home-made pure beef hamburger with caramelised onions and fries (good fries and a very competent burger, juicy with a grand crisp exterior). Or how about slow-cooked lamb shanks in red wine with rosemary and garlic? The shank when it comes may turn out to be singular, but it is a large one and sits on a mound of sound mashed potato surrounded by a moat of good, thick meat jus. Delicious seasonal fare.

At lunch, nearly all of these dishes stay the right side of £8. At dinner the kitchen gets a tad more ambitious, but not spookily so: the menu changes regularly but there might be a warm salad of scallops, rocket and bacon, or creamy wild mushrooms in a puff pastry case. To follow, roast chicken breast with roast garlic and artichoke fricassee, or fresh fish specials. When the local guns have done their stuff, game is featured. Should you be looking for a quality pint and a decent sandwich, or a sound and hearty meal in a congenial atmosphere, The Hankley is the kind of place that would tempt even the most urban urbanite to motor into the country and sample the rural idyll. Poop poop!

There's nothing like a moody village name to convince you that you are in the depths of the country, and Britwell Salome fits the bill despite, being located just off the M40 outside Watlington. The Goose is more gastro than pub, but the cooking is accomplished and the welcome warm.

The White Hart has made the transition from unremarkable local pub to restaurant with rooms and the cooking is suitably ambitious. The menu has a French accent, which is quite understandable when you learn that the White Hart is part-owned by Michel Roux. Chef Neil Bishop used to work at Roux's Waterside Inn before going to France and Bernard L'Oiseau's famous Hotel C?te d'Or in Salieu. This kind of gilt-edged provenance is hard to find.

In those brief moments when he's not scrapping in the press with our more iconic food writers, Antony Worrall Thompson may be found filming the BBC Food And Drink show in the bespoke primrose-yellow kitchen of his home in Oxfordshire. His two restaurants Wiz and Woz in Notting Hill Gate (Wiz downstairs and Woz upstairs, 123A Clarendon Road, W11, 020-7229 1500) must now share his affections with a new project, The Greyhound in Rotherfield Peppard.

This is a real pub. The bar menu includes a real ploughman's with real cheese and real home-made pickles. For the more adventurous, there is a small bistro serving simple dishes. In due course, eggs, direct from Wozza's hens, and pork from his Middle White pigs are a definite possibility.

A pub restaurant that has been noted by the cognoscenti for a couple of decades. Pretty grown-up stuff, but held in high esteem by Sunday lunchers in particular. The wine list is thoughtful and extensive while the cooking is considered.

A Victorian hotel that will gladden the heart of anyone who has read either The Wind In The Willows or Three Men In A Boat. People seeking a pubby environment will be happier in the less formal Boat House restaurant, with its casseroles and grills.

To be quite truthful, The Churchill Arms at Paxford is a little bit too far away to qualify as a target for a run into the country, but it is so very good that it must be included. Furthermore, there are rooms to be had - so if you succumb to the gastro delights in a big way you can sleep off lunch and take dinner and breakfast before going on your way. A very pleasant bar still performs its original function - providing the demon drink to village inhabitants - and there's a good selection of agreeably-priced wines.

There is no booking (it is claim your own table, first-come, first served) and a tempting menu of well-cooked food in decent portions. During the week it is full of Gloucestershire folk, and on Saturday and Sunday a mix of weekend villagers and visitors from London. Commendably (and as they say on their leaflets), this place is 'a pub with food, not a restaurant with beer'. What they modestly decline to mention is that the food is very good indeed.